Difference between revisions of "Being Born Again"
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Salvation is a change in what we are, not a ticket to Paradise. | Salvation is a change in what we are, not a ticket to Paradise. | ||
Latest revision as of 00:03, 14 June 2018
Being Born Again
Back to Sermons WOR
Copyright © 2004 Trumpet Ministries, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Salvation is a change in what we are, not a ticket to Paradise.
The sermon this morning (7/04/2004) focused on what it means to be born again. The passage of Scripture was Matthew 13, the parable of the sower.
The parable of the sower may be the basic parable of the Kingdom of God, of Heaven. This parable tells us the Christian salvation is not a ticket to Heaven but the means of being transformed into the image of God.
We were put in this world so we would have an opportunity to choose what kind of person we want to be and to be with after we die. The purpose of coming to Christ and receiving Him is so we can be made in the image of God in our character.
If we make a profession of belief in Christ, but our character does not then begin to change into the image of God, when we die we will be placed where the kind of person is that we have chosen to be and to be with. Accepting Christ enables us to be transformed in character. Accepting Christ is not a religious device that enables us to maintain a wicked, self-seeking, lying, perverse character; and then, when we die, go to live among the righteous in the Paradise of God.
Today there are numerous Christian churches that are filled with gossiping, slander, arrogance, seeking preeminence, covetousness, lying, haughtiness, bitterness, unforgiveness, enmity against one another, immorality, strife. Does this describe your assembly? It was true of the church in Corinth. And then we say we have been born again? Where is the baby?
We often hear of "born-again Christians." This may be a misnomer. Being born again is not the same as being converted to the Christian religion. Being born again means Christ has been conceived in us and now we are setting aside our own life that the new Divine Life may multiply in us.
True salvation is a change in what we are in character. After we die we will be gathered to our people, that is, to people who behave as we do. "Accepting Christ" does not alter this fact. The Lord Jesus Christ will change us into God's image if we ask Him to and then cooperate with His Spirit. But making a profession of faith in Christ can never bring a self-seeking member of a religion into the midst of the saints in Paradise.
Why did Jesus say the prostitutes would enter the Kingdom before the religious people? It is because the social outcasts may recognize their wretched condition, humble themselves, and ask God for help. But the religious people in their arrogance do not recognize their wretched condition and do not humbly ask God to change them.
Copyright © 2004 Trumpet Ministries, Inc. All Rights Reserved